musicfandomcom-20200222-history
The Opposite Of Smoke Is Egg Whites
Creator of the Mix: Rev. Syung Myung Me Initial Notes About The Mix: A few months ago, I sent out Jeff Bridges... I Don't Need No Jeff Bridges To Put Music To My Poem!, a set of mix CDs made up of songs that I enjoyed but most people hadn't heard (or, in some cases, heard of), but hopefully had a sense of longevity to the listener, so they didn't get sick of them or think they were a one-off novelty listen or anything like that. Putting that set together was a lot of fun, but I couldn't include a lot of songs I wanted because of the constraints of the length of a blank CD. Originally, it was just going to be a one-disc compilation, but there were so many songs that Had To Be On There, it expanded to two. That still wasn't enough for everything, so I decided to go for more songs and tended to cut the longer ones -- only one song longer than 5 minutes ("My Love" by Takako Minekawa at 6:53) made the cut. That one went pretty well, so not too long after doing it, I thought I should do CDs quarterly -- and I knew what I wanted to do for the next one. Since I opted for shorter songs before, this one was only going to have songs that were over 5 minutes long. Most of them are in the 5-6 minute range, though there are a few that are much longer. To make it a little more interesting, I set a few rules for myself: First, no remixes or extended mixes of songs. It just seemed a little cheap to say "Well, 'Flying North' is a really great song, so the 6-minute long remix will work, even though the real one's only 3!". Anyway, a lot of extended mixes are kind of lame, when they just splice in the chorus a few extra times and slicing and dicing lines from verses. On a similar idea, live tracks were also out -- there's a lot of songs where they'll be short on the record, but extended out during a live performance. (Ween's really good at that; everyone probably knows about their 22 minute version of "Poopship Destroyer", originally about 2 minutes of the Pure Guava album; but unfortunately, this meant, too, that there aren't any of the really awesome versions of "Voodoo Lady" that they've done, either.) Lastly, no medleys or song segues -- the only thing worse than pretending an extended mix counts is jamming two songs together, claiming it's just a long track. Anyway, it's common for songs segued together on a record to have been written at wholly different times -- for example, the suite that makes up the B-side of Abbey Road. (In fact, "Her Majesty", the bonus track from that album was originally intended to be in that medley, right after "Mean Mr. Mustard" -- and there's also different versions of "Mean Mr. Mustard" where his sister has a different name, from before they decided that "Polythene Pam" was going to be part of the medley.) Unfortunately, this set has the potential to be a less satisfying listen -- if someone didn't like, say, two of the tracks on each disc of the original, that was only about 5 minutes out of 80; here, it'll be 10 minutes of dislike minimum. This one actually went through a lot more changes than the first set did -- the second disc, especially, but I think this line up is pretty good, and hopefully turn folks on to some cool music they haven't heard before. There are some bands that appeared on the first set, but I tried to get new and different bands on this compilation, The Opposite Of Smoke Is Egg Whites. So, anyway, here are my notes on each of these songs. I hope you enjoy them! Tracklisting: DISC 1: #Coldcut (featuring They Might Be Giants) - The Guitar (Outer Planet Mix) #Plaid - Squance #Renaldo & The Loaf - Hambu Hodo #Brian Eno - The Great Pretender #Frank Chickens - Time Is A Passerby (In Tokyo) #The Magnetic Fields - Papa Was A Rodeo #Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players - Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959 #Sgt. Major - The World Inside #Laura Cantrell - The Whiskey Makes You Sweeter #Soul Coughing - Screenwriter's Blues #The KLF - Kylie Said To Jason #Thomas Dolby - Cloudburst At Shingle Street #The Carpenters - Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft DISC 2: #Wall Of Voodoo - Ring Of Fire #Gary Numan - M.E. #Boingo - Change #"Weird Al" Yankovic - The Biggest Ball Of Twine In Minnesota #The Dresden Dolls - The Perfect Fit #Cracker - Duty Free #Kraftwerk - Ruckzuck #The Fastbacks - Stay At Home #Neil Innes - Feel No Shame #Belle & Sebastian - Your Cover's Blown #Talking Heads - The Big Country